Re: [Marxism] Alternatives to Microsoft's Internet Explorer

[Nicolai Brown <nlb@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, Nov 27, 2004 at 07:51:53AM -0800, Walter Lippmann wrote:
> People everywhere are moving away from Microsoft's
> Internet Explorer browser. I'm still stuck with it
> but I have to admit that my tendency is always to
> be somewhat behind the curve when it comes to such
> technological matters.

Friends,

What a pleasant surprise to return home from Thanksgiving break to see
this email!  I've found "open source" software to be an important topic
that has been largely overlooked by the general public, and it seems
that Leftists are no exception.

First I would like to share a few brief notes about Mozilla and Firefox
before returning to open source software.  To clear up any confusion,
Mozilla and Firefox are web browsers, and both are made by the Mozilla
Foundation.  Firefox is a lightweight version of Mozilla.  Now, as
mentioned in Walter Lippmann's email, Mozilla and Firefox offer tabbed
browsing.  THIS IS A BRILLIANT FEATURE.  It allows the user to have open
many different webpages in just one browser, and to keep those webpages
organized in tabs intuitively located underneath the URL bar.  The tabs
are labeled by the titles of their respective webpages, and use the
custom icons supplied by websites that use them.  In short, tabbed
browsing is a very clean and intuitive way to organize multiple windows.

Popup blocking has also been mentioned.  Yes, Mozilla and Firefox both
do popup blocking.  I am so used to not receiving popups now that it is
rather aggrivating to use Internet Explorer in those rare instances that
I am at someone's house and need to use their computer, or whatever.
It's like having a telemarketer call every time I want to look at a
webpage!  There are a few 3rd party popup blockers, but I advocate using
them only as a last resort.  The built-in Mozilla/Firefox popup blocker is
effective and can be trusted more than Microsoft or Google.

As for other features, Mozilla and Firefox behave like typical pieces
of open source software.  This is a crucial thing to keep in mind:
Commercial software vendors only care about marketshare.  This goes
without saying, but needs to be repeated sometimes.  This is why security
vulnerabilities in commercial software products often sit for months or
even years after their discovery.  In many cases, these discoveries are
made public and commercial vendors STILL do nothing for months or
longer.  They can leverage marketshare through fraud and ignoble
business practices without having to exhaust capital by rewriting their
code, which in many cases is only a trivial fix.  However, the clumsy
commercial software model makes it cost-prohibitive to fix problems
and especially to distribute those fixes to customers in a timely
fashion.  (How's that for capitalist efficiency?)  The end result is
that said commercial products are a liability that invariably lead to
crippling internet worms and costly security intrusions.  By contrast,
the major open source projects tend to fix vulnerabilities within hours
of discovery, for two main reasons:

First, and this is key -- open source programmers can _only_ compete
with alternative commercial OR noncommercial software packages by
offering a superior product.  In the open source software world, every
single computer user can be viewed as a stock holder or potential stock
holder, so it should be fairly evident who is the boss.  Accountability
is the word of the day.  Open source software is simply the
public/collective product of a dynamic and vibrant virtual democracy.  Its
authors have no capital to use as leverage to exploit computer users.
Open source products rise and fall on their merit alone.  There is no
such thing as monopoly, advertising, or corporate deals.  So the
programmers are forced to provide a kickass product or get out of the
way.

Second, and this is an inherent by-product of point number one: major open
source software projects are more modular (decentralized) than their
commercial counterparts.  They are more modular, from an operating
system point of view, simply because they are typically produced by
different organizations.  For example one organization will make the
most popular web browser, another will produce the most popular graphics
program, another, the AIM chat client, and another still, the audio
program.  It is difficult to imagine the clusterfuck of commercial
embedded design in a clean and scaleable open source system.  From an
engineering standpoint, modular code is relatively easy to work with and
thus, easy to fix when there are problems.  This modularity is
guaranteed and upheld by the core of open source software, which is the
software license.

When I say the license, I am really referring to a collection of
licenses, but in general they will all share certain characteristics.
There are two main licenses, BSD and GNU.  BSD is similar, but not equal
to, a public domain license.  GNU is more restrictive, and essentially
allows all GNU-licensed software to be used for any purpose, but
guarantees that the software cannot be sold for profit and is extremely
anti-commercial (in ownership, but not usage) and communal.  Both more
or less guarantee that the software is and will remain, essentially,
communal property.  But what does this license stuff mean for modularity
and for the bigger picture?

Open source software, from the point of view of the entire operating
system, is inherently modular because of democratic licenses.  Let me
share another piece of the original email I'm responding to in order to
help illustrate my point.

> To be successful, it must be carefully managed,
> although not as firmly as a corporate effort aimed at
> creating a proprietary product. "There have to be one
> or two minds in charge," says Eich.
>
> The trick is to strike a balance between authority and
> indulgence. Says Walt Scacchi, a research scientist at
> UC Irvine's Institute for Software Research, who has
> been studying open-source projects: "It's a question
> of how much guidance and coordination is required to
> move things forward without being corrupted by
> authority."

This is true, at least in my view.  However, one element that is not
mentioned is the fact that open source projects can "split" if any
single member doesn't like the direction of the project, and this is a
regular occurence.  When one or more programmers don't agree with the
direction (or even people involved), they can form a similar project
based on different goals -- freely using the original software code as
a base for the new project.  This is legal according to the software
license and it is encouraged when programmers run into differences of
opinion that damage the team.  They split and go in different
directions, and choice features from product A can be incorporated
freely into product B, and vice versa.  The licenses were written
explicitly for the software to be free and equally available to all
people.  That is modularity/decentralization.  Basically.

As you can see, open source software provides a superior foundation for
growth.  It is a utopia of engineering.

As the author of one of the articles Walter Lippmann shared noted, there
must be some kind of central leadership within each of these projects,
independently driving them.  However, I don't believe it is fair to call
this leadership authoritarian, though, because the open source model
_explicitly_ allows for code-sharing, and by its nature, ensures it.
Thus, there is no capital in the typical sense to leverage because the
software is essentially publically owned, thereby destroying the
possibility of exploitation.  Or in other words, whoever directs one
particular open source project doesn't have an advantage over other
people, because the source code under control is essentially
communally-owned, and the means of production are under the control of
the workers (programmers) who can "seize" the code and split their own
project without harming the original one.  The Open source software model
is the closest thing to democracy that I can think of, off the top of my
head.  It is explicitly designed to promote collective work and to reject
oligarchy and corruption.

I've been using open source software since 1996.  In this time, I have
seen it grow exponentially both in the size of the community and in the
quality of the product.  I have watched it grow alongside its commercial
competitors, and believe me when I say that open source is outpacing the
commercial junk by a huge margin.  There are SO many more open source
projects out there than just Mozilla/Firefox.  I will name just a few
for anyone interested or curious about open source alternatives to
mainstream bourgeois software packages.

* GIMP is a free, open source alternative to $$$Adobe Photoshop$$$
* Gaim is a free, open source and compatable alternative to AOL Instant
  Messenger.
* OpenOffice is a free, compatable, open source alternative to MS Office

There are a ton of others, but honestly, I haven't used Windows in many
years and I don't keep track of what Windows users use and don't know if
there are Windows versions of some of the software packages I use.  As
far as I know, there are no Windows versions for the video or audio
player I use.  And some of what I use is more Unixy (more powerful but
bigger learning curve) and doesn't reasonably apply here anyway.  But I
can say that there is little I can't do on my OpenBSD system, and the
incredible power of standard Unix tools more than makes up for those
occasional lost possibilities, which tend to be trivial anyway (think of
the triviality of so many consumerist activities/trinkets/et cetera).
And like I said, the open source movement is growing exponentially,
meaning that these deficiencies are erased with time.  Add to that the
peace of mind of running one of the most secure and reliable operating
systems on the planet, and life is good.

I strongly urge all readers to try and slowly begin using open source
software, according to your comfort level and starting with the Firefox
web browser.  I don't advocate casual computer users to switch to
Linux or OpenBSD (or any of the other open source operating systems),
but individual software packages like Firefox are without doubt worth
trying and fully ready for the general public.  Stop giving the
financial oligarchy (Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Oracle, etc.) your
business whenever practical.  They need us more than we need them.

A friendly reminder for your conveniece.  The Firefox web browser can be
freely downloaded from here:

http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/all.html

I should note that the open source software movement is not a bunch of
Marxist programmers doing their thing.  They have simply found a
superior development model, and it happens to be highly democratic and
communal in nature.  Are you surprised? ;-)

In this email I wasn't quite sure what language to use in descriptions,
in trying to achieve an authentic balance between technical points and
language that can be understood by most people.  So if anything I have
said is unclear, please don't hesitate to ask, as I will gladly do my
best to clarify.  In fact I am sure this is the case, but I can only
know what to write through further discussion.  (And I have only scraped
the surface, from a Marxist perspective, on this seemingly small issue!)

Nicolai
--
The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't
have any.  -- Alice Walker

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